Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson—whose acclaim as a neurosurgeon is inversely proportionate to his qualifications as a cabinet secretary—was the subject of a short New York Times profile on Wednesday. There, we learned that the man charged with helping lift people from abject poverty to something resembling the American dream is a big fan of leaving poor people as uncomfortable as possible while in his care.

[Carson] nodded, plainly happy, as officials explained how they had stacked dozens of bunk beds inside a homeless shelter and purposefully did not provide televisions

Yes, that’s a man whose net worth is estimated to be somewhere between $9–27 million acting positively giddy when homeless people are crammed together, and deliberately denied the one of the most unassuming creature comforts available.

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Oh, and don’t think you’re getting a free pass from Carson, just because you’re, y’know, trying to kick heroin or something plush and comfortable like that.

At a supportive housing center for drug addicts in Lancaster, Ohio, Trisha Farmer, the chief executive of the Recovery Center, pleaded for more federal help to house recovering addicts.

Mr. Carson interjected. “We are talking about incentivizing those who help themselves,” he said, before again asking minutes later about how comfortable the facility was letting people get.

Something just must be done to stop America’s comfortable junky crisis!

As Carson put it to the Times, he doesn’t want to see:

“a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me.’”

In other words, he seems to want to make things as uncomfortable as possible, in order to kick people out of one of the few lifelines they may have.